This book considers the often unrecognised impact of different approaches to metaphor on readings of the prophtic sexual and marital metaphorical language. It outlines a practical and consciously simplified approach to metaphor, placing strong emphasis on the influence of literary context on metaphorical meaning. Drawing on this approach, Hosea 4-14, Jeremiah 2:1-4:4, Isaiah, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Hosea 1-3 are examined with fresh eyes. The book reveals the way in which scholarship has repeatedly stifled the prophetic metaphorical language by reading it within the ‘default contexts’ of ‘the m ... More

This book considers the often unrecognised impact of different approaches to metaphor on readings of the prophtic sexual and marital metaphorical language. It outlines a practical and consciously simplified approach to metaphor, placing strong emphasis on the influence of literary context on metaphorical meaning. Drawing on this approach, Hosea 4-14, Jeremiah 2:1-4:4, Isaiah, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Hosea 1-3 are examined with fresh eyes. The book reveals the way in which scholarship has repeatedly stifled the prophetic metaphorical language by reading it within the ‘default contexts’ of ‘the marriage metaphor’ and ‘cultic prostitution’, which for so many years have been simply assumed. Readers are encouraged instead to read these diverse metaphors and similes within their distinctive literary contexts in which they have the potential to rise vividly to life, provoking the question: how are we to respond to these disquieting, powerful texts in the midst of the Hebrew Bible?.